Human beings have enjoyed canning and artificial refrigeration for only a couple of centuries; for the countless millennia before then, salt provided the best-known preservative of food, especially meat.[1]
The harvest of salt from the surface of the salt lake Yuncheng in Shanxi dates back to at least 6000 B.C., making it one of the oldest verifiable saltworks.[2]
Salt was included among funereal offerings found in ancient Egyptian tombs from the third millennium B.C., as were salted birds and salt fish.[2] About 2800 B.C., the Egyptians began exporting salt fish to the Phoenicians in return for Lebanon Cedar, glass, and the dye Tyrian purple; the Phoenicians traded Egyptian salt fish and salt from North Africa throughout their Mediterranean trade empire.[2]
Along the Sahara, the Tuareg maintain routes especially for the transport of salt through the use of salt caravans (known there as azalai). In 1960, the caravans still transported some 15 000 ton of salt, yet it has now declined to only roughly a third of this.[3]
On the river Salzach in central Austria, within a radius of no more than 17 kilometres, lie Salzburg, Hallstatt, and Hallein. Salzach literally means "salt water" and Salzburg "salt city", both taking their names from the Germanic root for salt, salz; Hallstatt literally means "salt town" and Hallein "saltwork", taking their names from hal(l)-, a root for salt found in Celtic, Greek, and Egyptian. The root hal(l)- also gave us Gaul, the Roman exonym for the Celts. Hallstatt and Hallein in Austria, Halle and Schwäbisch Hall in Germany, Halych in Ukraine, and Galicia in Spain: this list of places named for Celtic saltworks is far from complete.[4][5][6]
Hallstatt gave its name to the Celtic archaeological culture that began mining for salt in the area in around 800 B.C. Around 400 B.C., the Hallstatt Celts, who had heretofore mined for salt, began flushing the salt out of mines as brine and boiling off the excess water. During the first millennium B.C., Celtic communities grew rich trading salt and salted meat to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome in exchange for wine and other luxuries.[1]
At times, troops in the Roman army were even paid in salt, which is the origin of the words salary and, by way of French, soldier.[2] The word salad literally means "salted," and comes from the ancient Roman practice of salting leaf vegetables.[2]
1 comment:
why don't you go pound salt?
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